Republican Party of Pennsylvania history

The gavel fell to open the party's first nominating convention, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on June 17, 1856, announcing the birth of the Republican Party as a unified political force.

Two years later, on September 5, 1858, Pennsylvania’s Republican clubs met in Pittsburgh to form the state Republican Party.

In 1860, the Republican Party elected Samuel Curtin to the Governor’s office and gained control of the state Senate — which they did not relinquish for 30 years.

The party’s first elected United States president was Abraham Lincoln, who took office in 1861.

In 1863 Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared slaves in rebelling states to be “forever free” and welcomed them to join the Union’s armed forces.

The prolonged agony of the Civil War weakened Lincoln’s prospects for reelection in 1864.

The abolition of slavery would, in 1865, be formally entrenched in the Constitution of the United States with the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment.

Stymied for a time by Johnson’s vetoes, the Radical Republicans won overwhelming control of Congress in the 1866 elections and engineered Johnson’s impeachment in the House of Representatives.

As a delegate to the Republican party's national convention in 1888, Stewart drafted the currency plank for the party's platform, which was later abandoned.

Predicting the Republicans would adopt a gold standard plank in its 1892 platform, Stewart refused to be a delegate to the Republican national convention that year.

The move to repeal the Sherman Silver Purchase Act in 1893 prompted a Senate filibuster that thrust Jones into the political limelight.

On September 4, 1894, Jones officially announced his decision to leave the Republican Party, and authorized the publication of his letter to the chairman of the Republican State Central Committee in Nevada, in which he stated:

Pettigrew left the Republican Party on June 17, 1896, to join the Silver Republican Party with Teller, Mantle, and Cannon.

In 1897, Poindexter moved to Spokane, where he became active in state and regional politics.

He rejoined the Republican caucus on December 4, 1899, at the beginning of the session.

No specific date has been found to mark his return to the party, but clearly the transfer was complete by the election of 1900.

The assassination of President McKinley in 1901 elevated to the presidency Theodore Roosevelt, leader of the party’s progressive wing.

A Republican in a Populist stronghold, he won election to the House of Representatives in 1902.

Democratic Minutes show him attending the Conference in December of 1903.

He was on the Democratic Steering Committee in June of 1906.

In 1908, Norris joined the House "insurgents," a group of Republican members critical of Speaker Joe Cannon's rule over the House.

In 1910, he won the Republican Senate primary, despite his public opposition to President William Howard Taft and the Payne-Aldrich Tariff.

The National Progressive Republican League was created in 1911 to encourage the nomination of a reform-minded candidate for the upcoming presidential election.

During the election of 1912, Poindexter supported Theodore Roosevelt's efforts to win the Republican presidential nomination.

With the Republican vote divided, Wilson won the presidency, and he was reelected in 1916.

In 1917, Norris became known as a Senate "irreconcilable" for publicly opposing the Versailles Treaty.

In 1919, he ran for president, but his anti-socialism and anti-labor platform received little support.

He remained involved in farmers' organizations, however, and joined the Farmer-Labor Party after it split from the Non-Partisan League in 1920.

Clarence C. Dill, a progressive Democrat, defeated Poindexter in 1922.

In 1924, Robert M. La Follette, who served in the Senate as a Republican, ran for president on the Progressive Party ticket.

In 1925, when Robert La Follettee, Sr., died in office, Robert La Follette, Jr. filled that vacancy.

During his successful reelection campaign in 1928, he publicly opposed Herbert Hoover's presidential candidacy, and later criticized the president's handling of the economy at the onset of the Depression.

The Democratic presidential candidate in the election of 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, easily defeated the Republican incumbent, Herbert Hoover.

La Follette and his younger brother, Philip, led the Progressives to election victories in 1934.

Norris left the Republican Party in 1936, and successfully ran for the Senate as an Independent, earning the endorsement of FDR and the Nebraska Democratic Party.

His popularity within Wisconsin declined by the end of his chairmanship, however, and he managed to win reelection in 1940 by just a narrow margin.

With his switch to the Republican Party in 1941, he began attending Republican Conferences.

Roosevelt’s three reelections (he was the only president to serve more than two terms), the succession of Harry S. Truman to the presidency on Roosevelt’s death in 1945, and Truman’s narrow election over New York Gov.

Shortly after his reelection in 1950, Morse criticized economic measures favored by most Republican members.

Rebuffed by his colleagues at the Republican National Convention, he cast an absentee ballot for Adlai Stevenson, the 1952 Democratic presidential candidate.

When the 83rd Congress commenced in 1953, Morse listed himself as an Independent.

On February 17, 1955, Morse joined the Democratic Party, and helped the Democrats take control of the Senate.

A former state senator, he was appointed to Harry F. Byrd, Sr.'s Senate seat when the elder Byrd retired in poor health in 1965.

By 1968 the party’s moderate faction regained control and again nominated Nixon, who narrowly won the popular vote over Hubert H. Humphrey, Johnson’s vice president.

Calling himself both an Independent and an Independent Democrat, Byrd won the six-year Senate term in the fall of 1970.

Nixon paid hush money to a group of men who broke into the Democratic Party's National Headquarters, located at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C., in 1972.

In the wake of the Watergate scandal, Nixon resigned the presidency in August 1974 and was succeeded in office by Gerald R. Ford, the first appointed vice president to become president.

Ford lost narrowly to Southern Democrat Jimmy Carter in 1976.

In 1980, Republican Ronald Reagan, running on a platform of reducing the size of the federal government, won the presidency.

His personal popularity and an economic recovery contributed to his 49-state victory over Democrat Walter F. Mondale in 1984.

His vice president, George H.W. Bush, continued the Republicans’ presidential success by handily defeating Democrat Michael S. Dukakis in 1988.

In 1992, the United States public elected the Democratic candidate, Bill Clinton, to the White House.

Ben Nighthorse Campbell left the Democratic Party on March 3, 1995, and joined the majority Republican Party.

Clinton was reelected in 1996, though the Republicans retained control of Congress.

In 2000, George W. Bush, son of former President Bush, also regained control of the executive branch for the Republican Party.

Jeffords announced his change on May 24, 2001, effective June 6, 2001.

In 2004 Bush was narrowly reelected, winning both the popular and electoral vote, and the Republicans kept control of both houses of Congress.

In the 2006 midterm elections, however, the Republicans fared poorly, hindered largely by the growing opposition to the Iraq War, and the Democrats regained control of both the House and the Senate.

In the general election of 2008 the Republican presidential nominee, John McCain, was defeated by Democrat Barack Obama, and the Democrats increased their majority in both houses of Congress.

The Republicans regained control of the Senate during the 2014 midterm elections.